Take flour torillas, for example. Your standard flour tortilla recipe goes something like this: Flour, baking powder, salt, water, and lard (or shortening).

But these have a tendency to expire quickly. Grocery stores are not able to stock a product that is not good after a few days. So most ready-to-eat flour tortillas you find will be loaded with less-than-great ingredients designed to extend their shelf life.

That brings me to a recent stop at a Gordon Food Service. GFS sells food and cafeteria products in bulk. I was there to pick up non-food items, but after spotting some flour tortillas on the shelf I could not help but stop to examine them.

I was expecting something pretty bad, but this ingredient list was beyond my imagination.

Bleached enriched wheat flour, water, soybean oil, hydrogenated vegetable oil with mono- and diglycerides added, sugar, baking powder, salt, vital wheat gluten, potato starch, calcium propionate, monoglycerides and critic acid to preserve freshness, glycerine, fumaric acid, sodium bicarbonate, dextrose, dough conditioner, cellulose gum, potassium sorbate, enzyme complex, and dough relaxer.

For the sake of my wrists, I chose not to re-type several parenthetical expansions on these ingredients, including the enriched wheat flour, dough conditioner, and dough relaxer.

These guys take food science to a whole new level by going absolutely nuts with the minor ingredients. Figuring out what you are eating from the list of ingredients is a major challenge; I doubt many people would recognize that they were consuming a “tortilla”.

All I can say is that these tortillas were promptly set back on the shelf after the photos were taken.

Let’s consider Chipotle’s flour tortillas for a moment. Edible flour tortillas require a little bit of fat (usually an oil or lard). If you want to make a vegan tortilla, lard is out, so you’re left with. But it’s hard to find oils that work right.

Enter trans fat, the recently ostracized fat which has been shown to have negative health impact. No major food company wants to touch trans fats with a ten-foot pole for fear of being demonized. But some places, like Chipotle, are stuck in a precarious position. Vegan/vegetarian tortillas can’t use lard or butter in their production, and palm oil (the vegetarian substitute) has an atrocious environmental record.

Possible options for flour tortillas

• Lard: animal fat, non-vegetarian
• Butter: animal product, non-vegan
• Palm oil: environmentally disastrous
• Soybean oil: needs to be hydrogenated (trans fats)

And that’s the list. If you were Chipotle, which one would you pick?

I wasn’t sure, so I asked. Here’s what Shannon Kyllo of Chipotle had to say:

Unfortunately, we do still have a trace amount of transfats in our flour tortillas (less than 0.5 grams). The trace transfats in our tortillas comes from hydrogenated soybean oil. Tortillas are one of those things that take solid fats to work correctly. You’ve got the option of tortillas made with lard (saturated fats), tortillas made with palm oil (environmentally disastrous), or hydrogenated vegetable shortening (transfats). According to modern science, it’s kind of a lose-lose situation. Also, in keeping our tortillas vegetarian- and vegan-friendly options, lard or butter is out of the question so we went with soybean oil.

There you have it. Chipotle went the trans fat route, but not simply because it’s the least expensive. Given the various possibilities, they were left with a choice between a small amount of trans fat (hydrogenated soybean oil) and environmentally disastrous palm oil. Though they went with soybean oil, the door is open for a switch to trans-fat-free soybean oil in the future.

Though initially off-put at hearing Shannon’s response, I realized that Chipotle’s reasoning makes sense. With less than 0.5g per serving, it’s a very tiny portion of trans fat. Technically, Chipotle is allowed to advertise that their tortillas have “zero trans fat”. But they didn’t here, and they should be commended for that.

While I eat at Chipotle much less frequently than I used to, it’s nice to know that a chain restaurant actually gives a damn about its social and environmental impacts on the world.

Further reading

• Trans fat (Wikipedia)
• Soybean oil (Wikipedia)
• Chipotle: Food With Integrity

And did I mention my absolute adoration for good Mexican food? No? Well, I love it. Can’t get enough. Except for refried beans, I’m not a big fan of those.

Can’t see the video? Watch it directly on YouTube.

Ingredients used here

• Alvarado Street Bakery sprouted wheat tortillas
• Ground beef (organic) from Dakota Beef Co.
• Red pepper and yellow pepper
• Mushroom (organic)
• Monterey jack cheese
• White cheddar cheese
• Olive oil (organic)
• Garlic powder
• Salt

Preparation

1. Cut up the vegetables and cheese.
2. Brown the ground beef, add spices if you like that sort of thing.
3. Put a little bit of olive oil on a pan, sprinkle garlic powder & salt, rub tortilla onto it.
4. Place cheese down first so it can start melting.
5. Spread filling mixture (ground beef, vegetables) over cheese.
6. Let the quesadilla cook for a minute. When the cheese has started to melt, fold the quesadilla over.
7. Flip quesadilla every 90 seconds until both sides begin to brown slightly.
8. Remove from pan, cut into 4 slices.

Possible foods to serve with

• Tortilla chips
• Salsa & sour cream
• Guacamole